BARON HILL, Beaumaris, Anglesey 2008

About half a mile west of Beaumaris stands the overgrown and spectacular ruins of one of Anglesey’s most stately of homes, Baron Hill.

A short walk through a wooded area along well-trodden paths reveals exotic gardens, palms, massive pines and twisted knuckled bark all overgrown and offering surprising viewings.

Although huge in its entirety, no obvious photographic views presented themselves or were easily found due to the mass of brambles and other vegetation. Roofless and too ruinous to enter, Baron Hill, although violently tumbling and emphatically reclaimed, is a beautiful and calming experience. Sun light flickered fleetingly through the heavily canvassed tree tops and large sections of fallen dressed stone stood, as monuments, alongside the ruin.

It was built in 1612, both reduced then enlarged into a very grand house, it was finally damaged by fire during the Second World War and thereafter remained vacant. Sixty years of rain and wind, frost and snow, has taken its toll, as expected, upon its walls. Sixty years: a generation of trees, once small saplings, have grown as high as its walls have crumbled.

The large blocks of dressed stone are soft and weathered, thin layers worn off over the years. The vegetation completes its yearly cycle and slowly eats away at mortar and takes hold of any gaps in the stonework, all contributing to the demise of house and character

There are many outbuildings, all ruined: stables with enormous large wooden doors, all rotting and overrun with brambles. Sneaking views around the grounds show the foundations of greenhouses and other outbuildings, the stone work covered in moss, the beams, windows and door frames damp and rotten, inevitable as time, eating and furthering the decay and finality of collapse.

Baron Hill 2008

Baron Hill 2008

Baron Hill 2008

Baron Hill 2008

Baron Hill 2008

To read further information on Baron Hill and the recent plans submitted to convert the house into flats please visit the external link:BARON HILL